basketball anecdote: coaching to your talent

Rick Carlisle, coach of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, is getting flowers a bunch these days. His team has had unexpected success for two seasons in a row. Last year they made the conference finals (the equivalent of the semifinals of the NBA playoffs). This year they’re in the Finals. As of last night, they’re up 2 games to 1 in the best-of-7 series against the heavily favored and usually dominant Oklahoma City Thunder.

I like the Carlisle story because it’s a herky-jerky growth story. His leadership arc isn’t a clean, smooth one and that makes it feel real to me.

In this ESPN.com article, you get some accounts of how Carlisle has grown as a coach of superstars over the last 25 years. Bluntly, he wasn’t good at that critical part of the job for a long time. 

He made efforts to improve with superstar #1 (Jason Kidd) and did, in fact, improve after a couple of years of tension and frustration and weak results. Then, with superstar #2 (Luka Doncic), he backslid and had trouble all over again, before eventually finding his way. Now, with budding superstar #3 (Tyrese Halliburton), it appears he had it figured out from nearly the beginning of their relationship.

Someone in the article is quoted as saying “he coaches [to] his talent.” In practice, this has meant releasing tight control of the action on the floor and giving his star license to improvise and orchestrate as he (the star) sees fit. Instead of running scripted plays that Carlisle calls from the sideline, the star makes decisions on the fly, within a system Carlisle has deliberately designed for the star’s skillset.

I find this evolution compelling. By most accounts, Carlisle knows a ton about basketball. (He’s even called a savant.) It’s likely that his knowledge of the game is even deeper now than it was 15 years ago, when he was struggling with superstar #1. Many in his position grip their teams more tightly as they age and gain knowledge; their awareness of the difference between their experience and that of their people makes them anxious. They even feel a moral responsibility to hold a short leash. I can’t let these KIDS screw this up - that would be a dereliction of duty.

Yet, bald, old Carlisle is giving the youngsters he leads more power than young Carlisle did. His teams are exceeding others’ expectations of them. 

I have a suspicion that they are, however, simply meeting the expectations Rick has helped them hold for themselves.

-eric